Anthropologists on the Psych Ward (2): Tea Ceremonies

A while back I posted this anthropological account of the bizarre, pen-based gift economy that takes place on psychiatric wards. We now have need of an anthropologist’s services again, in order to explain this strange encounter.

A nursing auxiliary and a student nurse are sitting in the office of a psychiatric ward. A patient walks in and says that a visitor has come to see him, and wants to know if he can use one of the teapots in the kitchen to share a cup of tea with his visitor. The NA pulls a series of faces and then says, “Er….no, because the NHS Trust has to pay for the tea bags.”

To explain what is going on here, I asked Professor Humphrey G Escobar, Visiting Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Recreational Pharmacology at Miskatonic University. He was kind enough to reply to my e-mail.

Professor Escobar writes:

Dear Zarathustra

On the face of it, the NA’s refusal seems absurd. After all, the NHS Trust shoves £150 into this patient’s buttock every time they give him an injection of Risperdal Consta. It hardly seems likely that its budget deficit is being caused by two tea bags that taste suspiciously like something that would be rejected for Tesco Value on the grounds of lack of quality. It also appears to be a reasonable request. The patient has a visitor. He wishes to share a cup of tea with him. What grounds could there be for refusing?

The refusal is because of the ritual significance given to tea bags, and their delineation of roles. Ritual is a vital part of any society. Indeed, as I type this I can hear the delightful screams of those lucky freshers who have been selected to be this year’s Freshers Week sacrifice to Yog Sothoth. Oh, what sweet music they make. By taking part in ritual, we enter into a role. For example, later this evening at the Faculty Invoking of the Great Old Ones I will be snorting a line of Venezuelan Happy Powder, wedging a peacock feather into my ass and donning a gimp mask to enter into the role of “Cthulhu’s Sweet Little Fucktoy”.

The roles that are being entered into here are that of “patient” and “staff”, and the tea rituals delineate these roles. The “patient” role is defined by having cups of tea during the ritual of “tea break time”, also known as “when the trolley comes round”. For a patient to have a cup of tea outside of “tea break time” would breach a taboo. Hence if a patient asks for a cup of tea outside of these ritually-appointed times a nurse will inform him that “you can have a cup of tea when the trolley comes around at 10.30″. The nurse will then return to her meditation upon the mysteries of The X Factor.

The staff, on the other hand, are not bound by the rituals of “Tea Break Time”. They can drink tea whenever they like, and frequently refuse cups of tea to patients while holding a steaming mug in their own hand. The roles are further reinforced by the tea receptacles. Patients drink from plain hospital-issue cups, often made of plastic. Staff, on the other hand, use a wide variety of mugs, usually larger than the patient cups in order to satisfy the staff’s voracious caffeine requirements. The “staff” mugs are often adorned with patterns, designs, or wildly implausible claims such as “World’s Greatest Lover” or “Sexy Little Minx”. Some of the mugs will have been handed down as part of the “Drug Lunch” gift economy, and staff will use the mug to show their allegiance to “Zyprexa” or “Efexor” or whichever priesthood has recently showered them with sandwiches and post-it notes.

To reinforce the roles, staff must never be offered tea in a “patient’s cup”. This will break a deep taboo and will be utterly horrifying to the staff member involved.

The use of food and drink is also illustrated by another example that was communicated to me.

A student nurse is asked to prepare some toast for the patients. In the kitchen there is some butter and some Flora, both of which have been sent up from hospital stores.

The student nurse starts spreading the butter onto the toast. A nurse walks in and reprimands the student, telling him, “The butter is for staff toast. Patients have Flora.”

Again, this seems bizarre. Both of these products have been supplied by the hospital, but they have been divided into “staff” and “patient”. If questioned, some staff may attempt to justify this on the grounds of “promoting healthy eating”. However, this seems unlikely to be the real reason. First, the toast is being served alongside large helpings of sausages, egg and bacon. Second, several of the patients are undernourished whereas several of the nursing staff are roughly the size of a truck, and have an ass bigger than mine will be after Great Cthulhu has finished with me tonight.

Again, the real reason is in the delineation of roles. Staff have butter on their toast. Patients have Flora.

To emphasise that these are purely ritual qualities, and have nothing to do with the actual material qualities of the tea and toast, here is a third example.

At a nursing home, tea bags and drums of coffee are taken out of the main store cupboard and placed either on the “resident’s tea and coffee” shelf or the “staff tea and coffee” shelf. Other than their placing on the shelves the tea and coffee are exactly the same kind and come from the exact same source.

A care assistant from an agency is doing a relief shift there. She picks a shelf at random and starts preparing tea and coffee for the residents. She is then reprimanded by the staff for using “staff tea and coffee”.

As we can see, any material qualities and differences attributed to the tea, coffee and toast are convenient fictions. These are ritual qualities designed to enforce a social role. Without these rituals, the basis of separation between “staff” and “patients” would come crashing down.

Cthulhu fhtagn

Humphrey G Escobar
Room 666, Jeffrey Dahmer Memorial Building
Miskatonic University
Arkham, MA

Note: Before posting this I channelled the Great Old Ones to ask them if it was indeed the case that Humphrey G Escobar was a fictional character, but the incidents described were real ones. Cthulhu replied, “That depends on your definition of ‘real’ and ‘fictional’. Now hurry up with that gimp mask and peacock feather. Dagon will be here in a minute and I’m not going sloppy seconds on him.”